Thursday, February 27, 2014

Not an Apartheid State? Bennett will take care of it.

The Batsheva Dance Company went
to New Zealand, for a performance reflecting the decadeslong artistic work of its director, the
wellknown
choreographer Ohad Naharin. But even
there, on the other side of the world, the dancers could not escape the political
problems of this country. Outside the St. James Theatre in Wellington were waiting
for them dozens of angry protesters, who accused Bat Sheva of “whitewashing”,
of presenting a nice face for the State
of Israel, hiding the violation of the Human Rights of Palestinians.

The protest organizer was John
Minto, known from the struggle against the South Africa apartheid regime - when
he and his fellows disrupted rugby matches where South African teams came to
play in New Zealand. In this week's demonstration Minto claimed that Israel,
too, is an apartheid state, since "Palestinians who have Israeli
citizenship are not regarded as nationals of Israel. To be a national of
Israel, you have to be Jewish, and so you have a whole network of laws that
follow through from that and which actually discriminate against Arab Israelis.''

A counter-demonstration was
held by members of the local Jewish community. Community representative David
Schwartz objected to Minto’s words, saying that "Israel is a democratic
state where all the citizens have equal rights under the law”, firmly asserting
that there are no laws discriminating against Arab Israelis and even making the
accusation that Minto and his fellows were themselves motivated by racism in voicing
their accusations of Israel.

From Jerusalem, capital of
Israel, Minister Naftali Bennett added his voice on that same day to the fierce
debate taking place in Wellington, capital of New Zealand. The voice of Bennett,
leader of the Jewish Home Party and a senior minister in the Netanyahu cabinet,
was loud and clear: "We must show zero tolerance to the national aspirations
of Israeli Arabs. We must mark out the Jewish character of the state, enact a
law which will set out firmly the identity of Israel as the nation state of the
Jewish people. Israel has numerous laws defending all kind of rights”,
continued the minister, “but there is no law on the basic identity of the state
itself. Some people here dream of making us into something like Sweden, but we
are not Sweden.” The Economy Minister especially attacked former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, accusing him and his fellow
judges of “consistently striving to
overturn the balance and strip the State of its Jewish significance” and of “enacting
a Civic Revolution at the expense of our Jewishness”. In his view, such landmark verdicts as the Ka’adan
Ruling should be overturned, Judaization should no longer be the obscene
concept into which the Supreme Court turned
it. Rather, Judaization should be elevated and enshrined as a supreme
constitutional principle of the Jewish state.

It may be worthwhile
recapitulating the Supreme Court’s Ka’adan Ruling - for the sake of those who
don’t remember. More than twenty years ago, Adel and Iman Ka'adan, a successful
young couple residing in Baka al-Garbiya, sought to build a house for
themselves and their children in Katzir, a new community being established nearby
where they could expect a higher quality of life which is not available in crowded
and impoverished Baka al-Garbiya. But their request to purchase a plot of land
at Katzir was rejected out of hand. The reasons were stated quite clearly and explicitly:
the Ka’adan are Arabs, while the community or Katzir was being built on land which
the State of Israel had allocated to the Jewish Agency which – being a purely Jewish
national organization - was involved with interests of Jews and engaged in creating communities open to
Jews only.

The Ka'adans contacted ACRI (Civil
Rights Association) and with its help appealed to the Supreme Court . In the
course of principled deliberations, lasting some five years, officials of the
State and the Jewish Agency expressly informed the court that establishment of communities
intended for Jews only was inherent in the implementation of Zionism, and so it
has been since the first Zionist pioneers arrived here. Chief Justice Aharon
Barak made ​​great efforts to avoid a conclusive
judicial ruling on the fundamental issue, and provide a personal solution to
the Ka'adans’ problem by finding them a plot of land "outside the
fence" , i.e. outside the land designated for the community of Katzir. However, all attempts to find a
compromise failed, and in March 2000 the counrt rendered a principled ruling. .

Chief Justice Barak wrote
that the decision to accept the Ka'adans ' appeal had been the hardest decision
of his life, but there was no escaping it. "Precisely because the state of
Israel is a Jewish state, it must uphold equality as a supreme moral value. Allowing
a community for Jews only is a clear violation of the law. The principle of Israel
being a Jewish and democratic state does in no way suggest that the State may
effect discrimination between its citizens.”

“The State is the State of the Jews; the regime
which exists in it is an enlightened democracy, which grants equal rights to
all citizens, Jews and non –Jews alike. There is therefore no contradiction
between the principle ​​of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and the absolute equality among
all its citizens. On the contrary: equal rights for everybody in Israel, whatever
their religion or ethnicity, is directly from the basic moral values ​​of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."

End of the story ? Not precisely.
The Supreme Court referred the Ka'adans to the admissions committee of the Katzir
community and forbade it to use their being Arabs as a direct or indirect
criterion for rejection. Whereupon the admissions committee promptly rejected
them again, this time not because they were Arabs but just because they “did not
fit ." ACRI lodged a second Supreme Court appeal, and in 2004 the government’s
Lands Administration announced that Katzir has grown in size and no longer
needed an Admissions Committee, and therefore the Ka'adans would be assigned a
family plot.

In August 2007, over ten
years after they had embarked on their struggle, the Ka'adans at last could
start building their home in Katzir. But the path opened with such effort did
not long remain open for the use of others. In March 2011, the Knesset passed
the Admissions Committee Law, which allows the government to allocate land for
the establishment of "Community Locations", where people can come to
live only if approved by an Admissions Committee – and such Admissions
Committees are empowered to reject any applicant which in their judgement “does
not fit the community’s social fabric”.

For Minister Naftali Bennett this
is not enough. He wants to turn the clock back to the period before the Ka’adan
Ruling. His Israel will not be like Sweden, nor like any other democratic
country in Europe or North America (or in New Zealand) . In the State of Israel
envisioned by Naftali Bennett, the statutory basic constitutional principle
would state that it is permissible and appropriate for the state authorities to
establish communities for Jews only, in order to promote the Judaization of the Galilee and the
Judaization of the Negev and the Judaization of the entire country. And what
about an Arab who dares to raise his voice in protest? The minister made it
clear: zero tolerance .

Meanwhile, United States Secretary
of State John Kerry is working hard to overcome the problem of the recognition
of a Jewish state, which has become a major stumbling block in the ongoing negotiations.
Netanyahu insists that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state as a
sine qua non for any agreement , while the Palestinians so far refused outright
to grant any such recognition .

According to media leaks last week,
some compromise solution might be found. For example, the Palestinians might agree
to recognize Israel as a Jewish state if they are categorically assured that this
would in no way compromise the civil rights of Israeli Arabs. Perhaps, the
Palestinians would eventually be able to live with such a formula. But could Bennett?